If there’s a moral to the story, it might be this: never, never joke about the possibility of being kidnapped.
John Paul Getty III was the grandson of oil tycoon John Paul Getty, one of the richest men in the world. He was said to have been his grandfather’s favorite grandchild, a cheerful, red-headed tyke, always into mischief. As he grew older, his mischief got more serious. By the time he was 15, he had been expelled from seven schools. He had destroyed several cars and motorbikes, and been arrested for participation in violent left-wing demonstrations. He also took drugs on a regular basis, and had posed nude for a sex magazine.
To be sure, he hadn’t gotten off to a very good start. His father, John Paul Getty Jr., had fallen into a life style that included steamy orgies and a bottle of rum and a gram a heroin a day. His father had cut him off from the family fortune, saying that no son of his was going to be a drug addict.
When Getty III was kidnapped, the family dynamic put him into a bit of a bind. His kidnappers demanded $17 million in ransom, and Getty Junior had no money of his own — just the salary he earned working for his father. He went to Getty Senior for the money, but the eldest Getty refused. “I have 14 other grandchildren,” he said, “and if I pay one penny now, then I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”
Actually, many members of the family suspected that the kidnapping had been faked. Getty III had often joked about staging just such an event to extort money from his wealthy grandfather. It wasn’t altogether certain that he actually had been kidnapped, even when his mother received a letter from him pleading for the family’s cooperation. “Dear Mummy, don’t let me be killed,” he wrote. “Pay, I beg you, pay up as soon as possible if you wish me well.”
The kidnapping was real. The perpetrators were a gang of Italians, loosely connected with organized crime. He had been taken to a mountain hideout in Calabria where he’d been kept chained to a stake. On October 20th, his kidnappers cut off his right ear, using a razor and without anesthetic. They mailed the ear, along with a lock of his hair and a typewritten note, to Il Messaggero, a leading newspaper in Rome.
Unfortunately, there was a postal strike in process, and the letter took three weeks to get to the newspaper. That’s a long time to wait, when you’re chained to a stake in a cave with a painfully infected ear.
Fortunately, grandpa eventually relented. He agreed to pay the ransom, although he negotiated it down to about $2.9 million. And he only paid $2.2 million himself, the maximum amount that he could claim as a tax deduction. The rest he loaned to his son, Getty Jr., at 4% interest.
Getty III was recovered on a snow-covered road between Naples and Rome on December 15, shivering and malnourished. He was filthy and his clothes were blood-stained. The kidnappers had given him penicillin to fight the infection, but they’d given him so much that he had become allergic to it. The day happened to be his grandfather’s birthday, and Getty III called him to express his thanks for his deliverance. The old man refused to come to the phone.
Nine kidnappers were eventually apprehended, but only two of them were convicted. Only a small amount of the ransom money was ever recovered — just what the kidnappers had in their pockets. Getty III’s problems, however, were only beginning.
He had been a little disturbed, psychologically, before the kidnapping, but now the young man was truly a mess. He was paranoid and frequently sleepless. He came to rely more and more heavily on alcohol and drugs to get him through each day.
He also married, at the age of 18, to a German model six years his senior. His grandfather, who had forbidden him to marry until the age of 25, disinherited him.
In 1981, at the age of 24, he took a combination of valium, methadone, and alcohol. The result was a coma that lasted six weeks. When he came out of the coma, he was nearly blind, unable to speak, and quadriplegic.
Of course, Getty III’s medical expenses were enormous, and the young man was not able to afford his $25,000 per month medical bills. His grandfather had died in 1978, and his Getty Jr. now held the family purse strings. He had kicked his own drug habit and was now one of the richest men in the world. He had donated millions to worthy causes: the British National Gallery, the British Film Industry, and the Lord’s Cricket Grounds, among others.
He did not, however, choose to support his son’s medical expenses, judging them the result of Getty III’s own drug-induced lifestyle. Getty III and his mother sued for support, and won. John Paul Getty III spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair, and died on February 5, 2011at the age of 54.
Sources: Chase’s Calendar of Events, 2011 Edition: The Ultimate Go-To Guide for Special Days, Weeks, and Months, Editors of Chase’s Calendar of Events; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_21; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Getty_III; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Getty_IIIhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8309645/John-Paul-Getty-III.html; ;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354353/John-Paul-Getty-III-dies-54-paralysed-30-years.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354365/John-Paul-Getty-III-destroyed-familys-billions.html; http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,911066-1,00.html; http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-john-paul-getty-iii-20110208,0,1147525.story; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/world/europe/08gettyobit.html?_r=1.